I took over the Osprey blogmaster role way back in December 2007, when we were still being hosted on an external blog site, with a loyal group of regular readers, and an equally loyal group of contributors.

A lot of things have changed since then. We migrated the blog over to our new website (moving hundreds of posts at the same time... a massive job!) we added to the ranks of contributors and we saw our readership figures soar. Now, nearly two years and over 500 posts later I have decided it is time for someone new to take the reins - to inject some new life into this great blog.

So I am going to step back from the day-to-day management of the blog, handing over to my more than able colleague Joe. It has been great fun, and while I am not going to be blogging two or three times a week I will still be popping my head round the door to provide a few words of 'wisdom' every now and then.

My favourite moments on the blog? I think it will forever be the series of posts that Peter Dennis did for us showing how one of our trademark pieces of art come into existence. Either that or the hours that I spent one year trying to work out how to code in some html that would get one picture to change into another picture when you rolled your mouse over it... just so that I could upload an advent calendar to the blog. I don't think I ever really succeeded with that one.

Now it is time to put my dodgy grammar out to pasture, to give my much overused exclamation mark key a rest and hand over to Joe....

Good luck and good night ;-)